2005 Pacific Life Open News
By Eleanor Preson  |  March 9, 2005

Between breaking off her engagement to Lleyton Hewitt and a wrist injury so bad it nearly ended her career, 2004 was a rough twelve months for Kim Clijsters but the 21-year-old is living proof of the old cliché that what doesn’t succeed in finishing you off only serves to make you stronger.

Yesterday the woman formerly known as ‘Aussie Kim’ romped past Australia’s Nicole Pratt 6-1, 6-2 to earn herself a place in the second round of the Pacific Life Open, a tournament where she won the title two years ago but where, these days she is simply an unseeded player ranked 133 in the world.

She came back in Antwerp last month but this is her first tournament away from home and she had good reason to feel trepidation. Inside of the first few minutes it was Pratt who had reason to feel anxious.  “I was a bit worried, I haven't played outside for such a long time and even when I was playing well, its always a bit of an adjustment to get used to that,” said Clijsters. “But today it felt good, maybe at the start a few easy mistakes but once I got going I felt good. I am excited to be back. On the other hand it was hard leaving home and packing and getting back.”

After six months at home nursing the wrist she was so unused to getting ready to go away that she over packed her suitcase, but having too many socks seemed to be the only cause for concern yesterday despite the wary look in her eye during her post match press conference as reporters pressed her about the changes in her personal life in recent months. They were thinking of September’s break up with Hewitt but that seems to have been only one of the many changes that Clijsters made when reassessing her life and career during her enforced sabbatical.

”This is the longest I’ve been at home since I was a little girl. For my career it hasn't been the best but I think for my personal life, I think it's all been good. You learn so much more about yourself and you learn about life and about things that you want and things that you don't want. It made me a stronger person and a more grown up person.”
 
Over the last five years I was more in Australia and now I was in Belgium I was able to meet a lot of people and do a lot of things that I've never been able to do. And that's been the best part about it.”

Clijsters spent the six months at home in the house she built eighteen months ago but had never really had time to live in, and when she wasn’t rehabbing her wrist she was spending time with her friends and family and living a life which had eluded her in the nomadic cycle of life on the tour.

“I've always had the tennis to think about it, especially in 2003 because I was playing so much,” said Clijsters. “When you don't have that, you have so many other things to think about. I went back to the time I sort of missed when I was 15, 16. You learn a lot over those months.”

Clijsters faces a long climb back to where she was but seems philosophical about it, as well she might given the fact that she feels lucky to be playing at all. After yet another aborted comeback in Hasselt last October – around the time she called things off with Hewitt – Clijsters was warned by her doctors that the wrist might never truly recover.
 
"You start thinking: What am I going to do next? For a while, I started thinking, 'What am I going to do? What am I interested in?' You don't accept that. You don't want to think like that yet. I felt like I still want to play because I missed tennis so much. It was such a great feeling to be able to play on that court in Belgium. You miss those competitions, playing those girls. I definitely felt like I wasn't ready to quit, not at all. If I would have had to, it would have been really tough. But luckily I'm sitting here right now.”

She has a winnable second round match ahead against Shinobu Asagoe and from then on she will start to add to her tally of ranking points and begin the climb back from 133 in the world to where she feels her natural place is – the top five.

“If you didn’t think you could do it, you wouldn’t try,” she said, with the good sense that comes from one who has been through tough times and lived to tell the tale.

"I'm more mature, I think, dealing with things. You learn from everything. At the end, everything turns out to be positive if you think positive. It’s been a very good lesson.”

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